The warnings don’t help when people’s curiosity (morbid, compulsive, or otherwise) has not been counteracted by learned experience (or tools via therapy) that they don’t like it or it doesn’t help them.
The warnings are generally not generic (aka ‘bad stuff here’), they’re usually quite descriptive of what category it covers. Far more than a NSFL warning for sure!
If someone keeps going, it’s not because they did so accidentally. They either thought it was going to be fine and they could handle it (and most can), or couldn’t stop themselves even if they knew it was going to be bad.
How?
Trigger warning = NSFL tag on the post
Allows you to have informed consent to consume content - or nope out of it.
For most people, "NSFL" is stuff like extreme gore.
For survivors, NSFL also includes whatever experience nearly did them in (so, literally NSFL). Hence more words needed.
Did this clear it up?
This is where they therapy side would be interesting to understand. Everyone is going to need a different response plan. Granted, many will be similar, but how do you teach someone to prepare?
> One possibility is that most people are not skilled at emotional preparation (e.g., reappraising emotional content or using coping strategies). Thus, the uncomfortable anticipatory period is unlikely to reflect any form of helpful action. This conclusion is supported by Bridgland et al. (2021) who asked participants to explain what they would do when they came across a trigger warning; only a minority of participants mentioned some form of approach coping strategy (e.g., reappraisal strategies, such as reminding themselves to focus on non-emotional aspects of the situation; Shiota & Levenson, 2009). Indeed, trigger warnings (including those used in the present studies) typically warn people about the distressing reactions they may have, but do not explain how to reduce these reactions.
Basically, content warnings aren’t useful on their own without additional therapeutic training, which makes sense. “Something bad is about to happen” isn’t useful if you don’t have the means or experience to prepare for it.